1894.
Grant Allen, Esq.:
Dear Sir,
I have only now ascertained that you are in England. I was informed that you were in the south of France. Some short time ago I asked Mr. Frank Murray of Derby to forward to you a copy of my just published romance Pharais. I now write to ask if you will accept it as a slight token of homage from the youngest and latest of Celtic writers to the most brilliant champion of the Celtic genius now living. I do not, however, send it by way of inveigling you to write about it, much as any word of yours would mean to me both in service and honour: but primarily because of your deep and vivid sympathy not only with nature but with the Celtic vision of nature—and, also, let me add, because of the many delightful hours I have enjoyed with your writings.
Faithfully yours,
Fiona Macleod.
Mr. Grant Allen replied:
The Croft, Hindhead.
Dear Madam,
I thank you for your book, and still more for your charming and too flattering letter. Pharais strikes me as a beautiful and poetical piece of work. It is instinct with the dreamy Celtic genius, and seems to come to us straight from the Isles of the Dead. That shadowy Ossianic spirit, as of your misty straits and your floating islands, reminds me exactly of the outlook from the western mountains over the summer-blue belted sea as I saw it once on an August morning at Oban. Too shadowy, sometimes, and too purely poetical, I fear, for your Saxon readers. But the opening sentences are beautiful, and the nature-studies and the sense of colour throughout are charming. Now, after so much praise, will you forgive a few questions and a word of criticism? You are, I take it, a young writer, and so an older hand may give you a hint or two. Don’t another time interlard your English with Gaelic. Even a confirmed Celtomaniac like myself finds it a trifle distracting. Don’t say “the English,” and “the Gaelic.” Give a little more story to less pure poetry. Of course I recognise that your work is an idyll, not a novel, a cameo, not a woodcut; but even so, it seems to me a trifle too dreamy. Forgive this frankness, and remember that success still lies in the lap of the Saxon. Also that we Celts have our besetting sins, and that perfection in literature lies in avoiding excess in any direction, even that of one’s own best qualities. Now a question or two—because you interest me. How in English letters would you write Pharais phonetically, or as near it as our clumsy southern lips can compass? (I have not “the Gaelic,” and my Celtic blood is half Irish, half Breton.) And how “Fiona?” Is it something like Feena? And are you Miss or Mrs.? And do you live in Edinburgh? If ever you come south, we hope you will let us know; for my wife read your book before I did, and interested me in it by sketching the story for me. Now see how long a letter I have written unto you, going the Apostle one better, with my own left hand: only the busiest man in England could have found time to do it.
Faithfully yours,